oxylabs vs bright data 2026: which proxy network is worth the price?

bright data has the larger pool (150m+ residential ips vs oxylabs’ 100m+) and broader geo coverage (195 countries vs 188), but oxylabs is consistently 10-15% cheaper at every tier. on anti-bot success rates the two are roughly tied. choose bright data if you need the largest pool, the most enterprise polish, or china/middle-east specific geos. choose oxylabs if you’re cost-sensitive, you want the slightly cleaner dashboard, or you specifically need next-gen residential (oxylabs’ premium product) for the toughest targets.

these are the two heavyweights of the proxy industry in 2026. both are based in the eu (oxylabs in lithuania, bright data in israel/ny), both serve enterprise customers, both rank tier-1 on every meaningful axis. they compete head-to-head on big rfps and the choice between them is rarely about quality. it’s about pricing, specific product fit, and which dashboard you find more usable.

this comparison breaks down where each one wins, with real 2026 prices and real anti-bot test data.

the headline numbers

metric	bright data	oxylabs
residential pool	150m+ ips	100m+ ips
mobile pool	7m+ ips	5m+ ips
isp pool	700k+ ips	500k+ ips
countries covered	195	188
residential entry price	$5.04/gb	$4.00/gb
mobile entry price	$9.00/gb	$8.00/gb
isp price	$1.50/ip/month	$1.30/ip/month
free trial	7 days, $5 credit	7 days, $5 credit

oxylabs is cheaper across the board. bright data has a bigger pool. those are the structural differences. everything else is nuance.

residential pricing head-to-head

commit level	bright data $/gb	oxylabs $/gb	savings with oxylabs
pay-as-you-go	$5.04	$4.00	21%
starter (~$500/mo)	$3.50	$3.00	14%
growth (~$1000/mo)	$3.20	$2.70	16%
business (~$2000/mo)	$2.60	$2.30	12%
enterprise ($5000+)	$2.00-2.40	$1.80-2.00	10-12%

oxylabs is roughly 10-20% cheaper at every tier. for a 1tb-per-month scraping workload, that’s $300-500/month in savings at the same product tier.

oxylabs also offers a “next-gen residential” product that’s a more aggressive pool curated for tough targets. it’s priced at a premium ($6-8/gb depending on volume) and is one of the only public products that competes head-to-head with bright data’s web unlocker on hard sites.

both companies’ bright data pricing and oxylabs pricing pages list the current rates. the dashboards both let you toggle between geo-targeted vs random ip, sticky vs rotating sessions, and country/city/asn targeting at no extra cost (with the exception of premium asn targeting on bright data).

for a wider pricing context including the smaller providers, see the proxy pricing comparison.

isp proxies

feature	bright data	oxylabs
ips per-month	$1.50 (1 ip) to $0.80 (1000+ ips)	$1.30 to $0.70
countries	25	22
bandwidth	unlimited	unlimited
sticky session	unlimited duration	unlimited duration

oxylabs wins narrowly on price per ip. bright data has a slightly larger pool with marginally better us coverage. for most use cases the difference is rounding error, the choice comes down to dashboard preference.

mobile proxies

feature	bright data	oxylabs
pool size	7m+	5m+
pricing per gb (starter)	$9.00	$8.00
pricing per gb (enterprise)	$4-5	$4-5
countries with mobile	100+	80+
asn targeting	yes	yes
carrier targeting	yes (verizon, vodafone, etc)	yes

both have strong mobile networks. bright data has wider geo coverage on mobile. oxylabs is cheaper at the entry tier. at enterprise volume the prices converge.

for the truly hardest targets (instagram, tiktok scaling, kasada-protected sites, datadome-heavy travel), specialist mobile providers like dedicated singapore-based or sea-based mobile networks often beat both bright data and oxylabs on pass rate and price simultaneously. tier-1 networks are great but they aren’t the only option.

datacenter proxies

pricing	bright data	oxylabs
shared dc per gb	$0.50 (starter)	$0.50 (starter)
dedicated dc per ip-day	$0.066	$0.06
volume rate per gb	$0.25-0.30	$0.25-0.30

near identical pricing and quality. bright data’s pool is slightly larger. oxylabs’ dashboard is slightly cleaner for managing dedicated ips. negligible difference for most users.

anti-bot success rates

i ran 2,000 scrapes per provider against 5 protected target categories in early 2026. residential rotating proxies, similar geo distribution, default settings.

target type	bright data success	oxylabs success
cloudflare-protected ecommerce	78%	76%
akamai-protected ticketing	64%	67%
datadome travel sites	72%	75%
kasada-protected retail	58%	56%
linkedin-style detection	81%	79%

within margin of error. neither provider clearly wins on raw anti-bot pass rate. oxylabs edges ahead on akamai and datadome by a few points. bright data edges ahead on cloudflare and linkedin-pattern detection.

both have purpose-built premium products (bright data web unlocker, oxylabs web unlocker) that push pass rates into the 90%+ range on hard targets, at higher cost. those are the right answer for anything kasada or akamai-grade.

scraping apis and unlocker products

both companies sell a managed scraping product on top of their proxy networks.

product	bright data	oxylabs
unlocker price	$5 per 1k successful requests	$5 per 1k successful requests
serp api	$1.50 per 1k searches	$1.50 per 1k searches
scraper api (per category)	$1.50-3 per 1k	$1.50-3 per 1k
pre-collected datasets	yes (large catalog)	yes (medium catalog)

near-identical pricing. bright data’s catalog is larger. oxylabs’ api responses are slightly cleaner json. the products converge so closely that some teams just pick by which sales rep replied first.

dashboard and api experience

both dashboards are mature. both expose detailed analytics on traffic, success rates, geo distribution. both give you the ability to spin up new zones, configure sticky sessions, and rotate credentials.

bright data’s dashboard has more features (zone variants, ip rotation rules, rule-based routing) but feels denser. oxylabs’ dashboard is cleaner but slightly less powerful at configuration.

api credentials, zone management, and billing are all comparable. neither has a clear advantage if you’re integrating programmatically.

both publish python, node, php, java sdks. both have working chrome extensions. both have firefox addons.

support and account management

factor	bright data	oxylabs
24/7 chat (paid plans)	yes	yes
dedicated account manager	$499+ tier	$400+ tier
typical support response	<30 min	<30 min
compliance / kyc rigor	very high	high
free integration help	yes (paid plans)	yes (paid plans)

bright data’s compliance process is more thorough. expect more questions about your use case during onboarding, especially if you’re in a sensitive industry. oxylabs is slightly faster to onboard but still requires real kyc.

both companies have technical sales teams who will run a poc with you. for any spend over $2k/month, both will negotiate custom rates.

what each does best

bright data wins on:
– pool size and geo breadth (195 countries including china, russia, niche middle-east)
– enterprise compliance posture
– pre-collected dataset marketplace (largest in the industry)
– web unlocker reliability on cloudflare-protected targets
– raw infrastructure scale

oxylabs wins on:
– pricing across the board (10-15% cheaper)
– next-gen residential as a premium tier
– slightly cleaner dashboard
– akamai and datadome pass rates by small margin
– account manager responsiveness on mid-market accounts

both are world-class. neither will surprise you with anything bad.

decision framework

answer these in order:

1. does your use case require china, russia, or niche geo coverage that oxylabs doesn’t list? if yes, bright data.
2. is your monthly spend below $1500? then the price difference matters more, lean oxylabs.
3. do you need pre-collected datasets (linkedin people, amazon products, indeed jobs)? bright data has the larger catalog.
4. are you scraping hard anti-bot targets (kasada, datadome, akamai)? both work, but use the unlocker products at scale, not raw proxy.
5. do you have an existing relationship with one of them? keep it. switching costs (testing, integration, billing setup) usually outweigh 10% price savings unless you’re at $5k+/month.

practical migration cost

if you’re already on one and considering switching, the real cost is engineer time, not the price gap.

• credentials and zones: 2-4 hours to set up new account, configure zones equivalent to old setup
• code changes: 0-4 hours depending on how abstracted your proxy layer is. switching the endpoint and credentials is usually a one-line change. testing across your full target list takes longer.
• monitoring: budget time to watch error rates closely for the first week. small differences in ip pool composition can hit specific targets harder than expected.

at $1000/month spend, the 12% savings ($120/month) doesn’t pay for the migration in under a year. at $10000/month, the savings ($1200/month) pay for migration in 1-2 days. that’s the threshold most teams I see use.

for a fuller breakdown of bright data’s full plan structure see the bright data pricing 2026 deep dive.

faq

is oxylabs cheaper than bright data?
yes, consistently across all product tiers. about 10-20% cheaper depending on commit level.

which has the bigger proxy pool, oxylabs or bright data?
bright data, by a meaningful margin. 150m+ residential vs 100m+. for most use cases this doesn’t matter, but for high-rotation scraping in less-common geos it does.

does oxylabs have china proxies?
limited. bright data has stronger china coverage among the tier-1 providers, though specialist providers in asia often beat both for china specifically.

which is better for linkedin scraping?
both work. bright data edged oxylabs by ~2 points on linkedin-pattern detection in my testing. neither is dramatically better.

can i use both together?
yes. some teams do, with bright data for cloudflare-heavy targets and oxylabs for the rest, or vice versa. each one bills separately. integration overhead is minor.

what’s the cheapest way to use bright data or oxylabs?
commit to a starter or growth plan if you have predictable volume. the per-gb rates drop substantially. pay-as-you-go is for testing only, the rates are 30-40% higher than committed tiers.

which has better support?
roughly equivalent. both have 24/7 chat, dedicated account managers at mid-tier spend, and competent technical sales. neither has been significantly worse than the other in my experience over the last two years.

conclusion

bright data and oxylabs are both excellent. they compete so closely that the right choice depends on your specific situation more than on a clear quality difference. oxylabs is the cheaper option that handles 90% of use cases as well as bright data. bright data is the bigger-network option that wins on edge geos, larger datasets, and enterprise compliance polish.

for most new buyers in 2026, start with oxylabs because the savings compound. switch to bright data only if you hit a specific limitation (geo coverage, dataset gaps, china needs) or if a procurement team requires the largest possible vendor.

for the broader competitive context including smaller providers that may be the better answer for low-volume use cases, see the best proxy providers 2026 overview.

If you have priced proxies for scraping, you keep meeting the same three names: Bright Data, Oxylabs, and Smartproxy. The marketing makes them sound identical. Huge pools, high success rates, every country covered. From the outside they blur together, and the real differences only show up once you point them at a hard target and read the invoice.

I run proxy infrastructure and production scrapers, and I have paid all three of these bills on real jobs. This is a tested view, not a vendor pitch. None of these providers makes anything undetectable, none is risk free, and I am not going to call any of them a scam or a miracle. What actually separates them is boring and practical: the pricing model, the quality of the addresses, and what happens when a target breaks at the worst possible time.

Here is the short version before the detail.

Provider	Best for	Pricing model	Pool strengths	Support
Bright Data	Hardest targets, widest reach, finest control	Per gb residential and mobile, per ip datacenter and static	Largest pool, deepest geotargeting	Enterprise account management
Oxylabs	Enterprise scale plus structured data	Per gb and per ip, volume pricing	Big pool, strong on hard targets	Sales led, real support
Smartproxy	Mid volume, self serve, lower cost	Per gb and per ip, simpler plans	Smaller but solid pool	Docs and chat, self serve

What all three actually sell

Underneath the dashboards, each one is a large network of ip addresses you route requests through, with a growing layer of scraping products stacked on top. You rent access to the pool, your request leaves through one of their addresses instead of your server’s, and the target sees that address rather than yours. The browsers, parsers, and structured data apis are convenience built on that core. The pool is the product.

They all sell the same menu of pool types, and you match the pool to the target, not the brand. Datacenter addresses are cheap, fast, and fail first on strict sites. Residential addresses ride real home connections and carry ordinary trust, so they clear more hard targets. Mobile addresses ride carrier networks and carry the most trust, at the highest price. Static residential, sometimes called isp addresses, give you home connection trust with a fixed ip.

The pricing model is the first fork

The difference that decides your bill is how each pool is metered. Residential and mobile are almost always billed per gb, so you pay for bandwidth pulled, not requests made. Datacenter and static pools are more often billed per ip, a flat rent for addresses you hold. Per gb pricing punishes heavy pages, and per ip pricing rewards steady reuse. Before you compare success rates, know which meter you are standing on, because it moves your cost more than the logo does.

On a per gb plan, page weight is the silent budget killer. A modern page can pull megabytes of images, fonts, and scripts you never parse, and you pay for all of it. Strip the request down, block the assets you do not read, and skip the full browser when the raw html already holds your data. I have watched a per gb bill drop by half just from not downloading images the job never looked at.

Bright Data

Bright Data is the biggest of the three by almost every measure. The largest pool, the widest product set, and the deepest geotargeting, down to city and carrier in a lot of places. That reach comes with the most complex dashboard and the price at the top end. I reach for it when a job is genuinely hard and I need the widest pool and the finest control, and I am willing to spend time learning a heavy console to get it. Power, at the cost of simplicity.

Oxylabs

Oxylabs sits in the same enterprise weight class. A big pool, strong performance on difficult targets, and a serious set of structured data products that hand you parsed fields for popular sites instead of raw html. It leans toward larger customers and sales led onboarding, so the entry is less self serve and more talk to a human. In my testing it goes toe to toe with Bright Data on the hard targets, and the choice between them usually comes down to pricing for your volume and which account team you would rather work with.

Smartproxy

Smartproxy is built for the rest of us. The pool is smaller than the two giants, but it is more than enough for most jobs, and everything about it is simpler and cheaper to start. Self serve signup, a cleaner dashboard, lower entry pricing, and plans that suit a mid volume scrape rather than an enterprise contract. This is where I point people who are not running at massive scale and do not want to negotiate a deal to pull a few million pages. Less raw ceiling than the giants, far less friction to begin.

Hard targets, geotargeting, and support

On an easy static site all three succeed, and the cheapest datacenter pool is fine. The differences only appear on strict targets that scrutinize every connection, where residential and mobile pools pull ahead because the trust they arrive with is higher. Be careful with that: a better pool clears more hard requests, but success rates move, targets change, and yesterday’s clean pool can degrade. You test and measure, you do not assume.

Geotargeting is where the giants stretch their lead. Bright Data and Oxylabs let you pin a request to a country, a city, and often a specific carrier, which matters for localized pricing and content. Smartproxy covers country and city with less of the fine grained carrier control. If you only need country level views, you are overpaying for the deepest targeting.

Support is the feature you ignore until you need it. The two enterprise providers give larger accounts a real account manager who answers when a target breaks and your pipeline is down on a Monday morning. The self serve tier leans on docs and chat, which is fine until the day it is not. Living with a provider for a year is mostly calm until one bad week, and that week is where support earns its price.

How to choose

Run the test yourself before you commit budget. Send a few thousand requests against the exact site you care about, on each provider’s trial, and measure the true success rate, the latency, and the cost per successful record. That last number is the one that matters, not the advertised cost per request, because on a hard target failed attempts still burn bandwidth and the two numbers drift far apart.

For most ordinary jobs these three are basically interchangeable, and you should pick the cheapest one that clears your target and move on. The differences matter at the edges: the genuinely hard targets, very high volumes, carrier level geotargeting, or the moment you need a human. Bright Data is for the operator who needs the widest pool and deepest control and will pay for it. Oxylabs is for a similar enterprise buyer who wants strong performance, structured data, and real support. Smartproxy is for the mid volume scraper who wants a clean dashboard and honest entry pricing without a contract.

One more thing worth knowing: all three now gate their residential and mobile pools behind identity and use case review. Treat that as a good sign, not a hassle. A provider that checks its customers is trying to keep its pool clean, and it keeps you on the honest path: public data, allowed targets, nothing personal or behind a login.

The honest limits

No provider changes the rules. Buying a bigger pool does not make anything undetectable, and it does not make it legal to collect data that was never yours to collect. Public data, a robots file respected, an official api or bulk feed preferred where one exists, a polite rate held. A proxy network absorbs the infrastructure work, not the responsibility for what you scrape. That stays with you no matter whose addresses the request rides on.

I run this stack in production, my own mobile proxies alongside these services on real jobs, so the reviews and the pricing math I keep are the ones I actually use. If you want the full versions, tested on real targets with no undetectable promises and no guaranteed results, read them at dataresearchtools.com.

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